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Most modern journalism is mere stenography, claims veteran Indian reporter

Posted: 05/04/01 By: Caroline White

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Veteran Indian reporter Palagummi Sainath has branded modern journalism "mindless notetaking" in a speech to Canadian students.

"In my view, the bulk of what is happening in the press these days is stenography," he told journalism students at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Mr Sainath, formerly a reporter on the Times of India, said: "Film stars, CEOs and the Indian beauty queens who were victorious in the Miss World and Miss Universe contests - this is what we are increasingly covering. The defining character of the media is a growing disconnection between mass media and mass reality."

He said the wealthy few who increasingly own most of the press were suffocating its freedom by ensuring that everything printed or broadcast fitted in with their business interests.

Mr Sainath believes the headlock that international media barons have put on the press contributed to the 1990s becoming "the time of the most gross social inequality since the Second World War". Referring to India, where the richest 5 per cent of the country owns the vast majority of the nation's wealth, he said the nation's press showed little interest in covering the issue.

"The [Indian] press does not have a single correspondent in a major paper who covers rural poverty," he added. "No one covers housing or unemployment or the 40 million job-seekers looking for work. But we do have a full-time correspondent covering golf."

The Eisenhower Fellowship winner did offer the audience of aspiring writers some hope, according to UBC writer Dirk Schouten. He told them that if they had the nerve, they could reform an industry in dire need of regaining its independence.

Mr Sainath ended his lecture predicting what would happen if someone walked into a newsroom and asked the reporters whether they had chosen journalism for the money. Not a single hand would go up, he claimed.

"Even the oldest cynic will tell you he got into journalism because he thought it meant something about connecting with society, about changing the world we live in today."

A fellow Indian journalist, Aniruddha Bahal, has done just that. A reporter for online news magazine Tehelka.com, Bahal and his partner Mathew Samuel spent seven months posing as arms dealers and exposed top Indian officials and army officers taking bribes.

He told indiaabroaddaily.com that he believes his actions should serve to empower others and embolden them to push the frontiers of reporting.

In an operation unparalleled in Indian journalism, Mr Bahal paid bribes totaling Rs.1.1 million to India's top ruling politicians and senior army officers to push for non- existent arms, secretly videotaping every transaction.

When the duo finally broke the story last month, they pushed Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's government to crisis point.

Mr Bahal said: "Talent is drying out in journalism as media platforms neither give money nor time to really good stories. Which media group will spend seven months and Rs.1.1 million to fetch just one story?"

The Tehelka site received seven million page hits in two days.

Claims that his tactics had been unethical were dismissed by the journalist as sniping by those whose corruption had been revealed. Mr Bahal also said he believed that, in cases like this, public opinion and interest were more important than whether the tapes would stand up to legal scrutiny.

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